Fam­i­lies reach $60M in land­slide set­tle­ments

SEAT­TLE — Survivors and fam­ily mem­bers of peo­ple killed in the na­tion’s dead­li­est land­slide have reached $60 mil­lion in set­tle­ments with Wash­ing­ton state and a tim­ber com­pany that logged an area above the site of the col­lapse.

Just as open­ing state- ments were to be­gin in a Seat­tle court­room Mon­day, Grandy Lake For­est As­so­ci­ates agreed to set­tle li­a­bil­ity claims for $10 mil­lion. The an­nounce­ment came af­ter the state on Sun­day reached a $50 mil­lion deal with plain­tiffs.

The slide on March 22, 2014, killed 43 peo­ple when it wiped out a ru­ral neigh­bor­hood in Oso. Survivors and rel­a­tives of the vic­tims al­leged that log­ging above the slide and con­struc­tion of a re­tain­ing wall along a bank where the Stil­laguamish River un­der­cut the hill in­creased the dan­ger, and res­i­dents were not warned about it.